


Recursion

by Amonae



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Gore, Violence, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 10:50:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11462049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amonae/pseuds/Amonae
Summary: When the worst day of Tony's life keeps repeating itself, he can only see one viable way to break the loop.





	Recursion

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for a BINGO fill ("Groundhog Day") for the Cap-IM community ages ago, I hadn't posted it anywhere but Tumblr--until now. I feel that it needs to be said, since apparently people like to jump to conclusions on the internet (who knew), that I do love Tony. I also love to hurt him sometimes, just like I do with all characters I write. That said, if you don't like these sorts of things, you can just click out of this window right now. :)
> 
> Thank you very much to [laireshi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laireshi) for the beta. Any remaining mistakes are my own.

He looks at his hands, sees the rusty shade staining the grooves between his fingers, his nail-beds. He turns the taps on again, as hot as they will go, and the bathroom fills with steam. With the sound of the running water he almost can’t hear the dry, hiccoughing gasps coming from deep in his chest. Slowly, his gaze moves to the mirror, already coated in a thick layer of steam. He swipes a palm through it, meeting espresso eyes sunken against a pallid complexion, dark circles like two deep thumbprints beneath them.

“I am Tony Stark,” he swallows, throat closing even as he forces his way through the words.

“And I killed Captain America.”

\---

Tony wakes with a start to the sound of the emergency alarm blaring, his room filled with a dull crimson glow and the soft sound of JARVIS’s voice behind all the ruckus. There’s a headache pounding thick and heavy behind his eyes and for a moment he debates returning to sleep, hiding away from responsibility and duty, all of the things he has worked so hard to be good at over the past few years. All of the ways he had tried to impress _him._  To live up to _his_ expectations.

None of it mattered anymore, did it?

“JARVIS, shut that damn alarm off.”

The room goes silent, and he pulls the covers over his head. If he pretends not to be here, no one will bother him. The rest of the team can handle it without him, even if they are down a member.

“Tony, get your sorry self out of bed and assemble already.”

His heart stutters and stops in his chest. The blankets are shoved unceremoniously to the floor as he looks toward the ceiling, knowing how clear the panic is on his face. But that, that voice… It isn’t possible.

“JARVIS? Where is Captain Rogers right now?”

JARVIS won’t lie to him, can’t lie to him. Unless Tony has finally cracked, slipped off the ledge into the gulf of creeping tendrils and dark thoughts, and lost his mind.

“Captain Rogers is awaiting your response on the rooftop. The rest of the team is already aboard the latest model of the quinjet. I suggest you hurry, sir.”

“Right,” he mumbles, reaching out an arm. He calls the suit to him, not caring about the undersuit. He has to see, has to make sure it's real.

Cap is glowering at him, cowl up and shield at the ready, when Tony arrives on the roof. Tony can’t make himself speak, can’t force his lips to form words. He’s grateful for the privacy afforded him by the faceplate—there is a burning at the corners of his eyes he doesn’t care to explain. But then some of the harshness flickers in those blue eyes and the look becomes almost concerned. Tony can’t deal with concerned, so he clears his throat.

“Sorry to hold up your little party, Capsicle. What’s the emergency?”

“If you hadn’t ignored the alert this morning,” there’s a little growl to his voice. It’s nice, real, _alive,_  “you would know. We’re dealing with some kind of mutation. It’s big, strong, and really likes to throw things.”

“So, you on a Tuesday.”

“Just move out, Iron Man.”

Tony watches the broad lines of his shoulders as Cap moves into the quinjet. He can see the rest of the team already inside; Natasha’s arm isn’t broken, Clint isn’t sporting a new gash along the ridge of his nose, and Bruce is tucked among the parachutes instead of being MIA. Without lingering too long on it, he offers a peppy salute and fires up the repulsors.

It could have been a dream. A nightmare, really. But it had all seemed so real that it’s still rocking him to his core. Now isn’t the time to mull over it, though. They have a job to do.

“JARVIS, play me in. Something hard and heavy to get the big guy’s attention.”

“Very well, sir.”

He blasts Zeppelin through the suit’s outgoing speakers, ignoring the complaints he hears over the comm lines. The music drowns out the buzzing at the back of his mind, the idea that this situation is strange, and he has almost rid himself of the last gnawing kernel of worry when he sees the creature.

Sure, it’s big and intimidating, but nothing they couldn’t normally handle. What’s concerning is that this monstrosity is identical to the one in his dream, down to the deep purple sludge dripping down its incisors. Which he knows is venomous, because he watched the Hulk get bit only to crumple like an infant moments later.

Tony doesn’t realize he’s frozen, hovering midair with the thick tones of _Immigrant Song_ blaring all around him, until Cap’s voice comes rushing through his helmet.

“Iron Man! Get your head in the game and get those civilians out of there!”

He shouts something like an affirmative answer, moving without conscious thought. There’s a woman huddled behind the remains of a VW and he swoops in to haul her to safety, the same as he did before. He fires a few repulsor blasts over his shoulder and disintegrates a chunk of concrete, just like before. And he watches the piece of steel rebar as it follows an arcing path toward the fray.

Just like before, it’s too late when he calls out, his voice dying on the swell of the breeze.

There’s a frenzy of activity, but for Tony, everything stops. He focuses on the singular point that is Captain America, collapsing to his knees and then to the ground, chest heaving. Tony doesn’t have to fly down there to know that his usually-bright eyes are unfocused and glassy, his breath coming in heavy, wet, shuddering sounds. He knows because he already lived this, already saw this moment in time, feels it as sure as the heartbeat thundering in his chest. When he comes back to himself, he is standing beside his team, the monstrosity defeated, everyone huddled around their leader's still form. It seems strange, to see him without a furrowed brow or a boisterous laugh or that sneaky smirk he gets when he knows he’s being a sarcastic little shit.

Captain America’s gone and it’s all his fault.

Again.

\---

Tony wakes with a start to the sound of the emergency alarm blaring, his room filled with a dull crimson glow and the soft sound of JARVIS’s voice behind all the ruckus. This time, there is no panic or confusion, he is throwing off the sheets and calling the suit in one fluid movement, hurrying to the rooftop and waving a cocky salute at the team before taking off toward the scene.

“Tony, what are you doing?”

“Sorry, Cap. Got a hot date later and I want to wrap this up real quick. You’d understand if you got out once in a while,” he teases before shutting down the comms, not wanting to hear the protests, not knowing if he can keep himself together if he hears the man’s voice, haunting him from beyond a twice-earned grave.

The thing is just as ugly the third time and Tony fires a few quick shots to its chest, trying to lure it away from where he knows the woman is huddled behind the VW. It works, insofar as it earns him a big furry claw to the center of the suit and sends him flying back into the side of a building. He makes a mess of someone’s office before detangling himself from the warped panels of the filing cabinet. By the time he heads back out, the rest of the team is already there, in the thick of the fight.

There is a moment, just barely, when he sees the debris coming at him, knows it’s going to hit. He hears JARVIS calculating risk and all that, but he ignores it, continues firing and darting between as much of the incoming danger as he can. What he doesn’t see is the shield, hurtling toward him in all of its red, white, and blue glory before it knocks him straight out of the air.

About three seconds before half a bus careens through the air space he had just been occupying.

“Thanks Ca–” he starts, remembering the comms are off and flicking them back on.

What he hears after the line opens up is Widow’s snarled voice, filled with rage and a tremble of fear. “Idiot,” she growls and for the life of him, Tony can’t pinpoint her location.

Then he sees her, a lean shadow crouched over—

No.

_Nonononono._

“Fuck.” He’s flying fast, too fast, and kicks up a scattering of soil as he falls to a stop beside them. Cap is lying against the remnants of what was probably a green space, before the fighting turned it to mulch, his breath strange and stuttering. There’s a large gash through his right shoulder, deep enough to see the pale smoothness of bone through a canyon of crimson. The edges of the wound bubble and hiss, a strange purple ooze eating away at what remains of his uniform sleeve.

“Hey.” The Captain waves with his left hand, weak, and it drops the second he’s made the gesture.

Tony clenches his hands into fists at his sides, feeling the creak and give of the gauntlets. “You fucking idiot.”

“You’re the one who turned off your comms, _idiot_.”

Cap is smiling at him. It’s almost fond, or would be, if he wasn’t dying. Tony can see blood on the whites of his teeth. It makes his stomach churn. He can’t look, can’t repeat the desperation of the last two times, the blood on his hands. He can’t do this again.

\---

Tony wakes with a start.

Mission.

Giant raging beast.

Complete chaos.

VW.

Shrapnel and screaming.

And no matter what, every time…

He can’t save him.

\---

He’s lost count of how many times it’s been. He doesn’t know how many times he’s been forced to watch Steve die, over and over again. It never ends, because no matter what he does, the outcome is the same.

There was the time he tried desperately to cover Steve’s back, sticking close as he could, and then the idiot went running off to save the woman behind the car. The woman that Tony should have saved. But Steve ran off and got himself impaled on the end of a mangled claw and then struggled to keep his innards from spilling to the concrete with nothing more than his hands.

Another where he didn’t go at all, the vague hope that it was his presence that was the cause. That time, the rest of the team came back with only a shield. Tony didn’t have the courage to ask why. He only wondered what he did to piss off the universe so badly that this was his punishment.

His mind is reeling, this battle blurring with all the others, repeating as a cacophony of noise in his mind. Tony can’t keep this time straight from the last dozen, but in the end, he supposes it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. He can’t stop this.

For a while, his brain runs formulas and calculations, computer programs that have yet to be built. It’s calming, to a certain degree, and he finds his mind diverting to infinite loops. A constant cycle repeated because of a glitch in the program, a delay that the computer can’t overrun. The only way to break the loop would be to introduce a new variable, whereas he has only been changing those that already existed. He needs a new method, a new diversion, a new algorithm to impose. Maybe, just maybe, that would stop this, halt the repetition in the coding, fix the flaw in the design.

“JARVIS?” His voice cracks and he ignores it, doesn’t think about the consequences, just the end result. That’s all that matters, anyway. “How fast can I blow through that thing with the unibeam?”

“Sir, the suit’s power is only at thirty-five percent and I don’t believe that is a wise–”

“Stats, JARVIS. Just the stats. Please.”

There’s a pause, and he hates to think of it as judgmental but, well. “It will take approximately thirty-three seconds, sir. And nearly all your remaining power.”

“Yeah, I thought so. Thanks, buddy. You know what to do?”

“Yes, sir. Protocol alpha-three-six-one-oh-two.”

“You’re the best, JARVIS.”

“I live to please.”

Tony bites the inside of his cheek, knowing that choice of wording was deliberate on the AI’s part. He ignores the ache of concern growing in his chest, the rapid pounding of his heart behind the arc reactor.

“Alright kids, playtime is over. Stand back and let daddy do his job.”

“Tony.”

He can’t deal with it, can’t handle the worry in that tone. So he just turns off the comms, giving a salute as he glides by and stops just short of the behemoth. It watches him with beady eyes, teeth bared in a grotesque snarl.

“Okay, big and ugly. How about you and me turn up the heat in here.”

It hurts. Everything hurts. And it’s bright. That’s probably because he’s watching the sky through half-lidded eyes. Can someone please turn off the sun? There is talking, shouting, really, but he can’t hear who it is over the blood rushing through his ears. Tony meets eyes as brilliant as the sky and feels his lips forming a smile, but it’s stretched thin, like it’s too big for his face, like it’s tearing him apart.

“Steve.”

He thinks he hears his name, but he could be wrong.

It doesn’t matter, anyway.

He saved him.


End file.
